V001 / JSI / T232

Researchers of the Laboratory for Cold Atoms at the Condensed Matter Physics Department F5 have confirmed Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) of Cesium atoms on March 31, 2017. They used the laser light to cool Cesium atoms to temperatures near absolute zero (below 20 nK) and compressed them into BEC using light and magnetic fields. The picture shows cooling and compression of cold atoms into BEC, forming a coherent cloud of 50 microns diameter containing 15.000 atoms. In this fascinating quantum matter, quantum physics is observable at the macroscopic level, making it an ideal system to simulate quantum phenomena, study quantum computing, or using quantum physics for metrology. With this achievement the Department joined a prominent laboratories performing experiments in quantum technologies.